Team Awesome Review

It’s an indisputable fact that superheroes are awesome, and the Edis Brothers recognized that fact and decided to create a team of superheroes to star in their game, Team Awesome. The title of this auto-runner mobile game indicates just how much cheese to expect while playing this game -- there’s gouda a-plenty, but it’s always fun, and never overbearing. Now, you can experience what it’s like to be a part of an awesome team making the world a better place by saving little grannies, putting fires out, knocking down break dancers, and battling baddies modeled after Arnold Schwarzenegger flying around in a heavily armed toilet. That’s right, an Arnold Octoflush called the Decontaminator!

Team Awesome offers four different superheroes to play as, each with their own set of abilities. The story goes that they started off as ordinary people, just like us, but were changed into being super awesome one day when a meteor crashed to earth. You start with the not so cleverly named, but fitting Awesome Dude, running through levels picking up coins and trying to accomplish whichever challenges you are given for that particular episode. There are 40 episodes, each with 3 different challenges, providing a multitude of objectives to complete. What proves challenging, though, is completing those objectives before the Awesonium meter runs out. This meter measures your awesome energy and is continually diminishing, giving you the added task of picking up more energy crystals throughout the level if you want to continue.

This game has some of the easiest controls of any iOS game. Your superhero runs automatically, and all you have to do is touch the screen if you want him to jump, or hold your finger on the screen if you want him to fly. You have to be careful not to just fly the whole time (unless you can constantly pick up energy crystals), since that will deplete your awesome meter quickly. On the flip side, one of the best things is that nothing else depletes the Awesonium meter. You can run into and over anything in your path without suffering any adverse effects. Awesome Dude (or the hero of your choice), can run through fire, fall from the sky, get hit by trains, cars, and trucks, but he’ll keep right on going with no damage accruing … because he’s awesome.

Even with the varied objectives and episodes, the layout of each episode and game play pretty much stays the same, making the game feel repetitive after a while. You run, you jump, you collect coins. The objectives help to keep the game enjoyable, but a little more variation would have been nice.

There are loads of unlockable content and upgradeable powers, which is awesome; but, they are really expensive, which is not awesome. The other superheroes range from 5,000 to an insane 50,000 coins! To put this in perspective, you also have to purchase each new episode, something you can easily do with the coins earned in-game, but if you want anything extra you’ll either have to grind for it or spend some real-world bucks. You can also spend your coins to refill the Awesomiun meter if you want to continue playing a level, but are about to run out of energy. All in all, it’s difficult to build up your bank to have enough for the upgrades, let alone any of the other heroes, which strongly pushes you towards spending cash to play the game. That’s how it is with many iOS games, but I, for one, would still like to say boo on that!

Team Awesome is nicely put together, with easy controls and cheesy narration by the one and only John St. John (Duke Nukem), who’s constantly telling you how “awesome,” or “not so awesome,” your performance was. I don’t think I’d call the game awesome, but it’s a fine piece of entertainment, well worth the price, and especially suited to gamers who love superheroes and want to game on the go.